Staff profile

When working as as a biological curator, I developed an interest in the history of collecting and collections, and especially into the founding collections of the Newcastle Museum. Expanding these studies into the fields of ethnography and the history of exploration, my PhD project focussed on the 18th Century Polynesian artefacts in Newcastle, especially on wickerwork heads from Hawaii. I continue to be interested in historical Pacific Material Culture, within the wider field of the study of objects.

• Collectors and collections
• Historic Polynesia
• Material culture
• Object histories

Journal Article

• Jessop, L. (2009). Two rare clubs from the American Northwest Coast in the Hancock Museum. Transactions of the Natural History Society of Northumbria 66: 189-204.
• Jessop, L. & Pigott, L. (2008). The governor’s wombat: early history of an Australian marsupial. Archives of Natural History 34: 207-218.
• Jessop, L. (2003). The exotic artefacts from George Allan’s Museum, and other 18th Century ethnographic collections surviving in The Hancock Museum. 63(3): 89-166. Transactions of the Natural History Society of Northumbria 63(3): 89-166.
• Jessop, L. (1999). The fate of Marmaduke Tunstall's collections. Archives of Natural History 26: 33-49.